IRIC - Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer

Published on September 8, 2025

In 2025, as part of the Discovery Grants Program, NSERC awarded significant five-year funding to the team led by Philippe Roux, head of the Cell Signalling and Proteomics Research Unit, and to the team led by Matthew Smith, head of the Cancer Signalling and Structural Biology Research Unit.

• Philippe Roux’s project, which received $220,000 in funding, aims to elucidate the role of RNA-binding proteins in cell cycle regulation. His team is particularly interested in those that control the entry into mitosis, a key phase of the cell cycle. By combining functional and proteomic approaches, this research program seeks to better understand the mechanisms that govern the normal progression of the cell cycle and its deregulation in cancer.
• Matthew Smith’s project, funded to the tune of $245,000, aims to understand how proteins function within the natural complexity of living cells, a crucial step in grasping the molecular basis of health and disease. Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy with stable isotopes, the team can observe the structure and dynamics of proteins, even in highly crowded biological environments. By developing In-Cell NMR (IC-NMR) to directly study proteins inside living cells, this work offers unique insights into how cellular networks function, while helping to explain how disruptions in protein behavior contribute to human disease and guiding new therapeutic approaches.

Congratulations to the IRIC teams!